Set up food processing units in Telangana: Niranjan to corporates
Hyderabad: Agriculture Minister Singireddy Niranjan Reddy on Thursday urged the corporate sector to come forward and set up food processing units in Telangana State. Building an agricultural ecosystem is important for the overall development and Telangana is witnessing a golden age in agriculture with farm innovations, smart poultry, smart agriculture and seamless growth in land […]
Hyderabad: Agriculture Minister Singireddy Niranjan Reddy on Thursday urged the corporate sector to come forward and set up food processing units in Telangana State.
Building an agricultural ecosystem is important for the overall development and Telangana is witnessing a golden age in agriculture with farm innovations, smart poultry, smart agriculture and seamless growth in land farming, he said.
The need of the hour is to produce more with less natural resources. The government is giving importance to setting up food processing zones, he said, in a message at the Agri Business Summit organised by RAY Consulting in the city.
Raghunandan Rao, Agriculture Secretary, said Telangana was the only State to provide 24 hours power supply to all sectors. It is also perhaps the first State to provide investment and input assistance to every farmer twice a year at the beginning of the crop season, he said, adding that about Rs 40,000 crore assistance was extended under this scheme so far.
Telangana is also the only State that has provided a fully functional farmers’ insurance. As a result of these efforts, there has been a 40 per cent growth in cultivated area in the last seven years, he said, adding that huge investments had gone into irrigation. “Farm mechanisation has also gone up and warehousing capacities have also increased. Telangana has fully trained agriculture graduates available for every 5,000 acre of cultivable land,” Raghunandan Rao said.
Industries Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan highlighted the efforts put in by the State to promote agri-food processing centres and urged agri-entrepreneurs to use this opportunity.
Dr US Awasthi, MD of IFFCO and Dr Deepak Shah, CMD of Sulphur Mills were honoured with ABSA Lifetime Achievement Awards.
“Cooperatives are the real models of growth of any nation. IFFCO Group contributed significantly to the GDP of the country with a turnover of over 7 billion dollars. We have reduced our average energy and water consumption. We reach out to 2.5 million farmers each year. Every fourth bag of fertiliser sold in India belongs to IFFCO. During 2022-21 we marketed 137 lakh MT of fertilisers in the country,” said Awasthi speaking on ‘How co-operatives can build a strong and sustainable agribusiness model’.
Shah, who spoke on ‘Innovation in Agriculture’, said the company worked on reducing the required dosages of 17 products. Innovation must reach out to all farmers in the country, he said.
Now you can get handpicked stories from Telangana Today on Telegram everyday. Click the link to subscribe.
Click to follow Telangana Today Facebook page and Twitter .
